The Underside of "Talent and Beauty":The Representation of Women in The Peony Pavilion and "An Encounter with an Immortal" Author: Hsiu-Chuan Lee(Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 46, No.1&2
Date：October 2001
Pages：31-49
DOI：10.6210/JNTNULL.2001.46.03

Abstract：

This paper explores the representation of women in Yuan Zhen's "An Encounter with an Immortal" ("Huizhen ji") and Tang Xianzu's The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) as two exemplary works of "talented scholars and beautiful women" (caizi jiaren). Drawing upon several Lacanian concepts about the representation of sexual differences, I explore the complicated power relations between the talent and the beauty while querying into the underside of the stories' portrayal of women's passion (qing). First, taking Du Li-niang as an example, I investigate the beauty's "negative entry" into the symbolic. Secondly, in light of the Lacanian idea of "courtly love" and "object a," I analyze both Du and Cui Ying-ying's "masquerade" to be the (phallic) object of male desire. Finally, I investigate how the beauty ascends from being an object of male desire to achieving a subject status in the symbolic economy through her marital relation with a man. My thesis is that fundamental to the Chinese pre-modern stories of "talent and beauty" is women's endeavor to be integrated into the symbolic. Instead of revealing women's "real" desire, the stories of "talent and beauty" dramatize symbolic order's operation in and through women.

Keywords："An Encounter with an Immortal" ("Huizhen ji"), Lacan , The Peony Pavilion, representation of women, stories of "talent and beauty"

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